There are various types of communication services in existence today using various types of physical communication infrastructures. For example, a cable provider uses coaxial cable feeding servers at a cable headend and a digital subscriber line xDSL provider utilizes twisted pair copper phone lines and modems in conjunction with a central office having servers. A satellite provider uses satellites in orbit and antenna dishes and receivers on the ground to wirelessly provide programming to users. Also, an Internet service provider (ISP) may utilize existing telephone lines connected to a server via a modem. Finally, optical fibers may be used to link servers and computers on a research campus or Intranet, for example.
Notwithstanding, different physical layer protocols, supporting different bandwidths and data rates, may be utilized on the different physical communication infrastructures. For example, certain existing telephone lines and servers may support 56K/sec communications using a PC with a 56K modem. Optical fiber lines and/or category five (CAT-5) unshielded twisted pair (UTP) lines may support Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) communications. The proliferation of network access peripherals or devices targeting mobile communication services has created a corresponding demand for these services to be available independent of the location.
For example, as media peripherals such as MP3 players or PDAs move or migrate from a first location to a second location, media available at the first location may not be readily available at the second location or readily transferred in a manner similar to that which occurs at the first location. In this regard, the media may have to be downloaded from a website or retrieved via an email, for example, when the media peripheral moves to the second location. Additionally, when the media peripheral is at the second location, current means of transferring media back to the first location may include email and/or saving the media to a storage device. In the latter case, once the media has been saved on a storage device, the storage device may then be manually carried from the second location to the first location.
Accordingly, whenever the media player is located at the second location, a user may have to acquire network access from a network service provider (NSP), log on in order to access the network and then determine the location of the media. Once the media has been located, the user may have to utilize additional software application to download the media and save the media to the media peripheral In the case of an upload, then after the user has gained access to the network, the user may then have to utilize additional software to upload the media. All of these may be time consuming and in certain instances, may prove to be very expensive. As a result, a user may be deterred from accessing the first location once the media peripheral is relocated to the second location. In the case of users that may not be technically savvy, they may not even attempt to communicate from the second location with the media peripheral.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.